


You still might hear your own voice

by dotfic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-05
Updated: 2010-10-05
Packaged: 2017-10-12 19:15:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/128166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dotfic/pseuds/dotfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean doesn't need back-up on a hunt. Castiel offers it anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You still might hear your own voice

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: set between 5.02 and 5.03. Written for the generous moorspede for help_pakistan. Time frame assistance from muridae_x's [post on 5.01-5.03](http://muridae-x.livejournal.com/242325.html). This obliquely references an event in a preseries fic I wrote several seasons ago, but it's not necessary to have read it. The title is from "The Pure Loneliness" by Michael Ryan, many many thanks to smilla02 for the suggestions and the beta read. <3

This diner in Wisconsin -- Steve's Cafe, according to the blue neon sign -- served its scrambled eggs runny while some godawful lite FM music piped in through the speakers in the ceiling. But the coffee was okay, and Dean had been driving for twelve hours straight, and it wasn't that he couldn't keep going or that his eyes felt all that grainy, but he was hungry so he might as well stop and take a look at the print-outs he'd run from his laptop eight hours and two states ago at a Staples.

In the past week, he'd gone after a nest of vampires, a shapeshifter, an aswang, and an infestation of basilisks slithering around loose in a zoo. Dean read the obits, the police blotters, and cruised the messageboards he'd heard Sam mention a hundred times. He drove all the way to Altoona to find that the werewolf was only a local serial killer with unusual kinks, shot by the local cops before Dean could even get near him. He thought he'd gotten wind of a curse in a small town in Alabama, but that turned out to be a bunch of asshole high school kids playing pranks.

Dean had the printouts spread out on the table, looking for patterns that might or might not be there, when his cell went off. Bobby.

"Hey," Dean said, his stomach a little less hollow.

"I know we've got an apocalypse in progress and all," Bobby said, "but there's a situation, and far as I know you're the closest hunter. You still in Wisconsin?"

"Yeah."

Wisconsin was -- well, Dean wasn't sure why Wisconsin. It was a place to be, but there were a hundred hauntings to choose from. Maybe he wanted to wag an EMF meter out at Seven Bridges Road, just for shits and giggles, until he found something better.

It'd been a week since his last text message exchange with Sam. Sometimes Dean initiated these check-ins, sometimes Sam, it didn't matter. With every _u okay?_ and _yeah, u?_ and _ok_ , Dean was free to drive as far as he wanted to, free of the brick of worry that sometimes settled heavy on his chest no matter how he pushed it off.

"Lay it on me," Dean said.

"Got six people dead up by Wood County, few of 'em the law enforcement who went to try and take the things out, and an eye-witness who swears they saw wolves. Only they didn't sound like no wolves I ever heard of."

Dean speared some runny eggs onto his fork, while the music overhead switched to Billy Ocean. Billy Ocean, for chrissake, what kind of lame-ass diner played Billy Ocean?

"Yeah, how so?" Dean eyed the eggs, swallowed, and lowered his fork without eating them.

"Spotted fur, high ridge of ruff on its back, and the eyewitness swears they were half the size of a horse and here's the kicker: it kept calling his name."

The memory of growls and teeth, shotgun blasts, Dad's voice quietly reassuring the poor kid he and Dean had rescued, flickered at him. Dean took a quick gulp of coffee.

"Dean? You hear me?"

"Yeah, Bobby." His finger traced along the handle of the coffee mug. "Hunted a leucrota once when I was a kid."

"Well, they're similar, but my money's on crocotta."

"Crocotta, leucrotta. You say poe-tay-toe, I say poe-tah-toe." Dean leaned back against the diner bench seat. A few drops of rain spattered the window, distorting his view of quiet highway and a tangle of overgrown meadow.

"They're not the same," Bobby said.

"Similar enough. Same M.O. I got it, Bobby. Those things are pretty easy to take out with a shotgun."

Didn't even need rocksalt -- they were corporeal. Dean felt a twitch of anticipation.

* * *

He sat in the Impala outside the diner for about three minutes before he realized he was waiting for Sam to finish in the bathroom or pay the check or get one last cup of coffee for the road.

Dean brushed his finger over the keypad of his cell phone before he chucked it onto the passenger side of the bench.

* * *

The Twin Pines Motel only had _Casa Erotica I and II_ on pay-per-view, which was pathetic, but Dean didn't have time for it anyway. Until the monsters killing people out in the woods were shotgun fodder, Dean wasn't planning to spend much time in the room. He transferred extra ammo, his hunting knife, some snacks, a bottle of drinking water, and a bottle of holy water and canister of salt, because you never knew, into the small duffel bag.

Dean rubbed a knuckle across his chin. Sunset wasn't for another few hours yet, according to his watch and the local news weather site. This should take him two hours, tops.

 _C'mon, Sasquatch, let's shake a leg_.

He heard the beat of wings against the air at the same moment he opened the door and started to step outside. Castiel appeared on the doormat, arms at his sides, his tie sloppy.

In order to keep from crashing into him, Dean had to pull himself to an abrupt stop.

"Cas?"

"Hello, Dean." He had his serious business face on, corners of his mouth turned down.

"What're you doing here?" Dean didn't know what else to do so he kept gripping the doorknob.

"I understand you're on a hunt of some kind," Castiel said. He hadn't moved.

"Uh...yeah?" Dean finally realized he was standing there like a jackass. He edged himself past Castiel, pulling the door closed behind him. "That's kinda what I do. When I'm not trying to stop apocalypses or avoid becoming an archangel condom." He walked towards the Impala and heard Castiel's steps behind him, following. "So what's going on? You find God? A lead on a weapon to kill the devil? You have some dire warning or instruction or portent of doom to drop on me?"

Castiel's shoulders lifted in a shrug. "No."

"Then what--" he opened the trunk, propping the lid open with the broken sawed-off, and started to check on his stash of ammo. "-- are you doing here? You trying to work up the nerve to ask me to go with you for a milkshake or something?" Castiel barely responded to that, except his mouth twitched, maybe. "How'd you find me, anyway? I thought the Enochian things you put on me and Sam made it so you couldn't."

"They do. No angel can." Castiel's back went a little straighter, his voice going rougher, more self-important. "I called Bobby. He told me what area you were in."

"And?"

"I searched within a twenty mile radius until I found the Impala. It's not very hard to spot."

Cars rushed by on the highway, the scent of damp earth and trees from the woods beyond the motel stronger than the concrete and exhaust. Dean should be headed for the trail where the killings happened already, but instead he stood there fingering the car keys in the pocket of his jacket and trying not to think about Castiel poofing in and out randomly until he'd found him.

"You couldn't have called?"

"I didn't think that was necessary. Besides, I thought you might..." Castiel shifted his weight and glanced down. "You might object and not tell me where you were. I thought it best if I simply show up."

Dean closed the trunk, got out his keys, and opened the driver's side door, deliberately yanking it to increase the stubborn creak. He could take care of that with some WD-40, and never had. He dropped the duffel into the back.

"Object to what?"

"You need backup," Castiel said, like he was proud of himself for picking up the term. "For your hunt."

"You're right," Dean said, sliding in behind the wheel. "I object."

Castiel's fingers curled tight over the top of the window, preventing Dean from yanking the door closed; it might as well have struck a brick wall. "Bobby said there were many of these creatures. There's only one of you."

"Yeah, that's observant, Cas, but I'm a big boy, been hunting almost my whole life and taken out plenty of shit on my own. So you can go flap off and go check out some temples or tortillas or whatever it is you do when you're looking for God." Dean turned the key in the Impala's ignition, let her angry growl fill the quiet Wisconsin air. Castiel's head jerked, a slight movement. "No offense," Dean added quickly.

It wasn't that he was afraid Castiel would start getting all smitey on his ass if he wisecracked about God again, but he felt genuinely sorry for the guy. Castiel, that is. He'd looked kinda hurt, and that kind of search could really take it out of a guy. Plus what the shit else were they all supposed to do to stop the cosmic crazy train, if Castiel couldn't track down his deadbeat dad?

Dean didn't like to think about what else they might do, about Zachariah and his threats.

"You can let go of the door now," Dean said.

But Castiel didn't let go.

"Caaaas." Dean lowered his forehead to the steering wheel, then glanced back up at him. "Go away." He flapped his hand. "I'm fine by myself."

Castiel gave him a steady stare, a cocktail of patience and irritation.

Well, screw this. The whole thing was getting too chick movie for his liking and there were monsters in the woods that needed shooting.

"Fine," Dean said. "I don't have time to argue with you. Get in the damn car." There was a beat of wings, a small brush of wind, and Castiel appeared in the empty space on the passenger side. "But don't even think about touching the radio, flyboy." Never mind that Dean couldn't think of any reason Castiel would want to play the Impala's radio, he felt the need to say it anyway, to establish some kind of boundaries, for crying out loud. "We've got rules about that. Driver picks the music."

Castiel stared out through the windshield, small frown crease between his eyes and his hands folded on his lap as if he wanted to make sure not to violate any of Dean's rules.

* * *

It wasn't a long drive to the start of the trail, but long enough that the back of Dean's neck started to itch with how quietly Castiel sat, staring out the window with the shadow of leaves sliding rapidly over his face. Dean kept the music on loud, and it was fine with him if angel boy didn't want to talk, but there was something about Castiel's silences that were different (different than Sam's, the back of Dean's mind jabbed at him; no, different than anyone's). Where he kind of folded into himself and left Dean with the reminder that Castiel was umpty-ump thousands of years old, which was just freaky. What was Dean supposed to do with that, driving around with Bachman Turner Overdrive blasting and an angel riding shotgun, and none of it seeming strange as it should?

Castiel had started to seem not at all strange, in fact. He was...Castiel, whatever that meant.

The rainstorm moved on and the sun shot the clouds through with gold by the time they got to the start of the trail.

"Really," Dean said, getting his shotgun out of the trunk and tucking his revolver into the back of his jeans, "I can do this without you."

"So you keep saying."

"Okay, if you're going to stick around a hunt with me, there's a few things." Dean loaded some extra ammo into the pockets of his jacket.

"More rules?"

Dean stuck his boot on the fender, tugged up his jeans, and strapped his hunting knife to his calf. "Rule number one, do what I tell you. This isn't the Angel Family Feud, it's a monster hunt. Rule number two..." Dean couldn't think of anything else; Castiel could poof himself out if he got into trouble, and he didn't seem to want a shotgun. Dean tugged down the leg of his jeans, shaking off the idea that Castiel had made him into his sole job for the day.

"And?" Castiel said.

"No, that's it." Dean hefted his shotgun. "Let's go."

* * *

Dean fired off two blasts of the shotgun, hitting one crocotta, missing the other, when he heard a huff of growling breath above and behind him, the scrape of claw on rock, small noises he almost missed in the wake of the gunshots. Dean whipped around, bringing the shotgun up, but the thing was already in mid-leap, and he was screwed, completely fucking screwed--

Castiel slammed into him from the side. As they fell, Castiel jabbed two fingers to Dean's forehead, not taking the time to make that as gentle as he usually did. Dean's stomach lurched, the world spun with a quick rush of wind, and then they thudded to a dusty wood floor indoors somewhere, a tangle of legs, arms, denim and trenchcoat. Dean managed to keep a safe grip on his gun, the duffel bag wedged under his hip.

"My apologies," Castiel said. "There wasn't time to do that more comfortably."

As Dean put his hands against Castiel's shoulder and shoved, Castiel pulled himself off Dean and got to his feet, brushing the dust off his coat in a self-conscious way.

"Yeah, no, that's okay," Dean said, coughing as he pushed himself up on one elbow. "'Scuse me while I go hurl." He caught the way Castiel's hand moved, reaching out towards him, then pulling back as Dean got to his feet on his own. His shoulder ached a little from the impact.

The cabin had no furniture except for a few broken chairs and a scuffed, dirty white metal footlocker with a Green Bay Packers sticker on the lid, so faded the logo was almost illegible. Dean lifted the lid with the toe of his boot, and found it empty. Faded daylight trickled in through the cracked windows, and the air smelled musty, of rotted wood and mildew.

He turned and found Castiel watching him, blue eyes and blue tie the brightest objects against the dusty, washed-out brown of the walls.

"It's not my fault things went FUBAR back there," Dean said. "The eye-witness only mentioned seeing two of those things."

"Don't leucrota hunt in packs?" Castiel did his head-tilt thing, eyebrows going up a little, using the expression that always made Dean feel like Castiel sometimes feared for his intelligence.

"Crocotta," Dean snapped. "Yeah, they do, I know that, but how was I supposed to know there would be a half dozen of the suckers? Besides, I could take them out one by one anyway. That was the plan, I..."

Crap, he wished Castiel would stop looking at him like that. He almost looked worried. It was irritating as hell.

"What will you do now?" Castiel asked.

Dean peered out through the smudged, rippled glass, and moved to get a less distorted view of the woods. He caught a flicker of movement far off in the trees, a large shape, brown fur. "They're out there. Don't know if they've tracked us here yet."

"Stay here," Castiel said -- an order. He used the soldier voice, a tone Dean had heard enough times from his father, from Sam, and he probably sounded like that too. "I'll do a reconnaissance."

He was in charge here, not Castiel, but before Dean could open his mouth, a quick, contained rush of wind kicked up a cloud of dust. Dean stepped back to avoid it, coughing.

Son of a bitch hadn't even waited to see if Dean thought that was a good idea.

He peered through the windows on all sides of the cabin and didn't see any movement. The sun was low enough now to burn red through the tree trunks, long thin shadows everywhere, trees still thick and green, yellowed at the edges. His visibility was for shit.

"Dean! Dean, help me. Dean!"

He'd never heard Castiel sound like that, voice rough and frantic and terrified and a part of his brain muttered at him that this was wrong, all wrong, and there was no way some stupid crocotta could get the jump on a mother fuckin' angel of the lord, and there was something else Dean was forgetting. But Castiel's mojo wasn't what it once was, and this wasn't his battle ground, so Dean was already at the door, yanking it open and was outside, dead leaves crunching beneath his boots and his shotgun to his shoulder in less than a second.

"Cas?" He yelled. "Cas!"

"Dean!" It sounded like he was to the south of the cabin.

Dean took a step in that direction, but then fallen leaves were swirled up around him and Castiel was right in front of him, expression fierce as something from a painting, and shot through with relief, unless Dean was imagining it.

But there wasn't time to think about it because two of the creatures emerged from the trees, racing towards them, teeth bright and white and sharp.

He knew better. He knew how these monsters worked, and he'd fallen for it. Stupid, rookie mistake; he wasn't fourteen any more for crying out loud. Dean got off one shot, and the beast let out a squeal of pain. The other one leapt as Dean fired again, but his shot went wild.

Castiel put his fingers to Dean's forehead and they were back inside the cabin. The wall shook as the crocotta thumped against it.

"What the hell!" Dean spun to face Castiel. "I was about to get the other one."

"Looked like the other way around to me. There are also four more on the other side of the cabin. If you'd stayed out there, you'd be easy prey."

"I don't know about easy..." Dean moved towards the window again, saw two of the creatures in the fading light.

"We were stupid," Castiel said.

Dean opened his mouth to tell Castiel exactly where he could shove that assessment, when he realized Castiel'd said _we_.

"They lured me off." Castiel wasn't looking at Dean, his gaze stoically turned towards the window. "Farther away from the cabin than I'd planned to go. I was foolish to fall for it."

"They're tricky little bastards, aren't they?" Dean said. He flashed a grin, not sure what he was covering over with it. "They tailed us while we hiked in here and overheard us and imitated our voices."

Not that they'd been all that chatty on the way in, but enough. They only needed to hear a person's name spoken once to copy how they sounded.

It would've been no effort at all for Castiel to pop back into the cabin to determine Dean's true position, but Castiel hadn't done it. He'd gone right in the direction of Dean's voice.

"Why didn't you --" Dean stopped.

Well, shit.

"They were extremely convincing." Castiel's gaze flicked to Dean, and away.

Dean made himself busy reloading his gun.

The sun sank lower outside, filling the cabin with red-gold light, like a neon sign outside a hundred different motel rooms, only more real, as a thick silence dug in. Castiel seemed very concerned with a loose thread along the edge of his trenchcoat sleeve.

"Crap, I'm losing the light." The shadows were too deep now -- Dean thought he saw the creatures moving among the tree trunks. "Crap." He slapped his palm against the cabin wall.

Castiel walked over to him and lifted his hand. "We should go."

"What?" Dean leaned away. "No. I'm not giving up."

"You can't fight them at night."

"So, I'll wait for morning. This place is pretty run down, but it's not like they can break through the walls and if they go for the windows, I'll shoot 'em." Dean moved around the room, taking stock of what was available. The footlocker he could shove in front of the door for the night. There was nothing in the tiny bathroom, little more than an outhouse attached to the cabin, except for two spiders. He could break up the chairs and use fire to herd the critters, maybe.

"Dean," Castiel said.

"What?"

"There's no reason you can't leave and come back." Castiel folded his arms, but his voice had gone softer. "You and Sam aren't the only hunters at work."

"You'd be surprised how few we know."

He pulled out his phone, touched the keypad, thought of Jo and Ellen, but if Jo and Ellen had been less than a half a day's drive away, or Rufus, Bobby would've said so. Dean's finger hovered over the key to dial Sam and he almost pushed it, almost.

"Look, Bobby sent me because I was closest," Dean said shortly, and put the phone away. "No one else is nearby right now. So if I wait, then we all come back in a day or two and maybe more people will be dead. Park service is so clueless they think they're dealing with a few rabid coyotes, and it's park service who got killed trying to hunt them. So for right now, I'm it."

Dean put his palm against the ragged edge of a support beam, trying not to hear Sam's voice in his head making some smart remark. Suddenly exhausted, Dean slid down and sat with his back against the wall. He put down his shotgun and reached for the duffel bag, dragging it towards him across the dusty floor.

"Got some provisions, and water. I'll wait out the night and then kill the bastards in daylight." He rubbed a finger over the frayed softness of the small hole in the thigh of his jeans, thought of sitting on that hard floor all night, no music, no TV. Maybe he could sleep. He'd lost tracked of the last time he'd had more than a four-hour stretch of it; his eyelids itched.

A board creaked as Castiel stepped closer and Dean looked up, startled, as he carefully settled himself on the floor next to Dean, their shoulders several inches apart. His trenchcoat spread over the wood, the belt trailing. He propped his elbows on his knees and leaned his head back until it hit the wall.

"What're you doing?" Dean tensed, moving so their shoulders weren't quite so close, trying to get a clue from Castiel's face.

"Waiting with you," Castiel said, as if this should've been obvious. His gaze slid sideways to Dean, then away.

"That's not necessary." Dean relaxed against the wall again and stretched his legs out.

"Necessary has nothing to do with it." Castiel kept his knees bent, dress shoes out of place against the worn, dirty wood floor-boards

Dean had to work at figuring out what to say to that, a smartass remark on the tip of his brain, but he couldn't actually put one together. His shoulder itched, and Dean reached under his jacket to scratch, feeling the raised lines of the scar through his t-shirt.

Castiel went on, "Although I'll point out that my original assessment was correct. It does seem like you could use some back-up."

"Yeah. Well." And that was about all Dean could think of to say.

* * *

Dean had never known anyone who could sit that still for that long. Castiel remained pretty much in the same spot for hours, while Dean kept getting up to stretch and walk around the cabin. The moon cast a washed-out shadowy half-light.

He ate the energy bar, then got out the giant bag of candy he'd brought. He offered a handful to Castiel, who stared at the candy on his palm suspiciously.

"What are they?"

"Peanut M&M's," Dean said. "C'mon." He jerked his palm closer to Castiel's chest. "They're good!"

Castiel took a handful and cautiously ate them, one by one, chewing slowly.

With the air of one passing down the word from on high, Castiel said, "The red ones are vile."

"Huh. They all kind of taste the same to me." Dean popped another handful into his mouth.

"Not to me. The green ones are the best."

"A lot of people would agree with you. So..." Dean bent his left leg and leaned his arm on it, M&M bag dangling from his fingers. "What do you think about, when you're sitting around waiting?" Dean finally asked, because it was something to do, but maybe he wanted to know, really. A little.

"I listen to trees," Castiel said.

Dean waited for more but Castiel didn't seem to have anything to add and he didn't seem to think that listening to trees was anything out of the ordinary.

"You are one weird nerdy dude, you know that?"

Long thin fingers splayed over his knees, pale against the dark fabric of his pants, Castiel turned his head towards Dean. The grin was small and quick. "Well, you ought to know from weird, Dean."

"Did you...was that a _joke_?"

But Castiel's face had gone serious again.

At around two in the morning the creatures started up again with their calls, making the hair on the back of Dean's neck stand on end. He reached for his shotgun. Castiel was already on his feet and at the window, moving far too swiftly for someone who'd been sitting on the floor that long with cramped stiff muscles. The tension in his stance made Dean think of a cat watching birds.

Dean joined him and saw four leucrota sitting out under the trees, facing the cabin, teeth gleaming in the moonlight.

"Could try again to take 'em out," Dean said under his breath. "Pick them off one by one." He thought of what happened earlier, Castiel's fingers against his forehead, not as gentle as usual, and their slamming into the cabin floor. "Hey," Dean said. "How much mojo do you have? Can you keep doing that vanishing and reappearing thing again and again in a short period of time?"

"Yes. For a while, before I tire. What are you suggesting?"

"I have a plan."

"That doesn't sound promising." He faced Dean, the both of them in front of the window.

"You haven't heard it yet!" He hated the way Castiel could do that, look at him like he knew everything Dean was about to think, or had thought, and yet found Dean the most puzzling thing in the universe.

"Fine." Castiel let out a sigh so deep Dean felt the breath against his cheek. "Tell me your insane plan."

"How do you know it's insane?"

Castiel gave him a look.

* * *

The moon gave them plenty of light, and the plan work even better than Dean hoped. He was bait, standing alone until one of the beasts rushed him.

For a sickening moment Dean remembered deep-throated barking and claws on his flesh before Castiel tapped him on the forehead and moved him a few yards away so Dean could shoot it. The next one attacked and he and Castiel did the same thing.

The crocotta didn't catch on until almost the entire pack was gone, and by then they were so confused by their disappearing, reappearing prey that the last one Dean killed was sitting back on its haunches when Dean and Castiel reappeared, its head tilted to the side like a startled puppy who'd had a squeaky toy suddenly snatched away.

"Yes!" Dean's fist pumped the air, the smell of pine mixed with blood and gunpowder tingling in his nose. "See? My plan was awesome." The world tilted sideways. "Okay, I'm going to toss my cookies now."

There wasn't much to come up, only the remnants of the energy bar and the M&M's. Shotgun still gripped in his hand and his legs starting to ache from crouching and his stomach jumping like a crazy jumping thing, Dean accepted it when he felt a hand against his back.

Dean heaved one more time, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, swallowed and inhaled deep breaths while the world stopped spinning. The hand on his back stayed there, warm and certain.

Then it moved away and Dean stood up.

"I did warn you," Castiel said.

"Yeah, you did. It's fine." Dean breathed slowly. "Yeah, I'm good." He leaned against a boulder softened with moss. "That was almost kind of...fun."

"Hunting is sometimes fun for you." While Castiel's voice didn't rise in a question, it sounded like one.

"Sometimes," Dean said. "Used to be." He fingered the cold metal of the shotgun. "Rather do this than deal with the apocalypse."

"I wish there was more I could do," Castiel said. "That you and Sam had been spared this."

Dean looked up and found Castiel's face caught in shadow from the trees. He pushed himself up off the rock. "Listen...job's done. I gotta hike out of here back to the car and come back with a shovel, bury those things before someone finds 'em and freaks out and a bunch of zoologists have a geekgasm. There's stuff folks are better off not knowing. So you...you really don't have to stick around."

"Digging is hard work. And you're already exhausted. Let me help."

"I can manage."

"I'm sure you can." Castiel paused, pulled in a breath. "Let me anyway."

"Yeah," Dean said. "Okay."

 

~end


End file.
